


The Adventure of the Creeping Midlife Crisis

by gardnerhill



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Community: acd_holmesfest, Dogs, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Hurt John Watson, M/M, Married Sex, Old Married Couple, Story: The Adventure of the Creeping Man, Werewolf John, Wolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-28 07:29:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12601420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: The Presbury case brings a number of things to a conclusion for Watson and Holmes.





	The Adventure of the Creeping Midlife Crisis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spacemutineer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemutineer/gifts).



> **Disclaimer:** 95% of all ACD Holmes is in the public domain. Sir Arthur may have made the dolls and sold them to us, but does not get to tell us how to play with them.

In early September of the year 1903 I was bitten by a dog, which incident helped to resolve a certain uneasiness in the relations I had at that time with my friend and colleague, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. How this came about is a story that bears the whiff of scientific fiction in the mode of Herbert Wells' fantastic tales, and yet also retells one of the oldest stories of all, for man's nature has not substantially changed in millennia.

In those days my association with Sherlock Holmes was not of the same quality that had informed our lives in earlier times. We were not young men any more, no longer the impoverished chemist and invalided soldier seeking only reasonable lodgings and an agreeable flatmate. The changes caused by life – my respectable marriage which had caused our first true separation, three years of grief after Holmes' disappearance at Reichenbach which only intensified with the death of my wife during that time, and the uneasy manner in which we had reacquainted ourselves upon his return from exile – had marked both of us.

Our work was not the same as it had been either. More and more Holmes found himself irritated rather than stimulated by the cases that came to our door. He often spoke of retiring to Sussex to follow one of his scientific interests – his chosen profession, he snapped, had devolved into requests to retrieve lost pencils or to spy on unfaithful royal spouses.

I had also received proof the year before that I was no longer the young man who had first followed upon my friend's heels, when one case ended with me sustaining a minor bullet-graze. That that incident could have easily ended as tragedy – if Evans' bullet had been a mere half-inch off and severed my femoral artery instead of merely giving me a painful thigh-crease – would not leave my mind. Another aspect of that incident bothered me greatly, and made me question my continuing usefulness to my friend in the field. This subject, however, I had not yet broached with Holmes as he was understandably sensitised to any mention of that case, owing to his own reaction to that small injury.

Age was beginning to settle into my bones and joints, not only in my old war wounds. As Holmes seemed to take more cases which rarely required him to leave the Baker Street sitting room and were matters of pure brainwork, I kept busy with my practise, and often did not even see Holmes for days at a time.

And yet that work remained – our work, our firm as Holmes put it – and I received proof one day in September when I received a telegram as of old, delivered to my office. I could not help but laugh in wry resignation at the missive – IF INCONVENIENT COME ALL THE SAME FULL STOP S.H. – for was that not truly a summation of my relationship with this man? Ever my commanding officer, he gave the order, and ever the soldier, I obeyed. Despite my qualms about my continued usefulness to Sherlock Holmes in the field I was well-aware of my value to the man in other ways; even if all I did was sit in a chair and smoke a cigar whilst he soliloquised at me I would be providing assistance. Apologising, therefore, to the indignant and half-undressed Mr. Hutchins in my consulting room, I headed home midday.

When I arrived, however, Sherlock Holmes seemed to want to do nothing more than expound on the nature of dogs; only when I was close to losing my patience with him (along with having lost one actual patient) did he finally tell me about Professor Presbury being attacked by his faithful wolfhound. Hydrophobia seemed the most obvious answer; I said as much, and as I expected Holmes was disappointed by my response.

The appearance of Presbury's assistant Bennett put an end to this discussion and laid out the situation for us both. Young Mr. Bennett (and Presbury's daughter Edith, when she joined us later) told us of drastic personality changes in a staid if occasionally irascible academic, all of which seemed to stem from the 61-year-old widower's abrupt engagement to a blushing 23-year-old lass. The professor's growing secretiveness, travels to European nations whose scientific reputations have a sinister bent, and strange outbursts both from the man and from his wolfhound, all made me see why Holmes was intrigued by the case. This had the air not so much of crime but of the bizarre and unusual, which was my friend's lifeblood. The Professor's eccentric behaviour could point to an illness that required the services of an alienist; as a medical man, I would be useful here as well.

In my younger days I would have been packed and ready at Holmes' elbow in less than an hour. But I had more ties to a sedentary life now, and a bigger practise than before Reichenbach – I had buried myself in work in those years of mourning – so my preparation required a good deal of bustling, rescheduling patients or contacting other doctors to assist me, before I was able to join Holmes on the Monday morning train to Camford and our temporary lodgings in the shabby comfort of the Chequers.

Our first meeting with Presbury in his campus office revealed all the erratic and violent tendencies of which Bennett had spoken, and we only just left without coming to blows with a respectable man of science. This only amused my friend, even as I worried at what kind of mental derangement had caused such behaviour, and wondering if indeed hydrophobia could account for it.

In the sitting-room of Chequers we went over the facts of the case, and the way the dates of the dog's attacks happened at 9-day intervals. We had still not accounted for all the strangeness about this matter but it was a beginning, as Holmes said. The port was good, if no patch on our own, and supper was a pleasant, unremarkable meal.

That night as we lay close-pressed in one of the two beds in our room, Holmes began caressing my side and kissing the back of my neck; amused and pleased that his mental faculties were not the only way I stimulated him, I rolled onto my elbows and groaned in pleasure at his warm weight on my back. Though our physical relations remained against the law, the only scandalous thing about them in those days was their placid domesticity; we did not indulge as frequently as in our hot-blooded youth, and with age had come copulation that was less the frantic grappling of lust and more a prolonged embrace between dear friends (which, indeed, it was). In his middle age, possibly during his exile, Sherlock Holmes had finally learned not to deprive his flesh whilst his brain was occupied; though he was in the middle of a case that fully engaged his mind he continued to eat and drink well, and was happy to lie with his lover and sleep soundly afterward.

After receiving more information from young Bennett the next morning we returned home, to await the conclusion of the 9-day cycle that marked the Professor's aberrant activity along with the arrival of strange parcels from Bohemia. Holmes returned to his chemistry set and I to my practise (and finding that I was now one man short, Mr. Hutchins having no desire to do business with a medical man who abandoned him mid-examination).

The following Monday night found us in the bushes outside the professor's window and Holmes telling me about the state of Presbury's knuckles as a clue to the whole affair. "My mind is going, Watson," he whispered vehemently. "It's time I retired to that farm of my dreams – Hullo!"

We saw the professor himself, hunched over and creeping along the ground. He did not look like a lumbago-ridden man, but like an ape. He sprang onto the ivied wall, swinging himself up like a monkey or squirrel.

Holmes remained in a rigid crouch, a fixed stare at what a precisely rational mind told him could not be, as motionless as his own wax bust. My own mind, however, gibbering with tales of selkies and shape-changers, knew what I saw, even if my own rational mind told me it was nonsense.

Any attempt at maintaining rational thought vanished at a cry in the night – the long, low howl of a wolf, coming from the other side of the house. From the stable – where the wolfhound, Roy, had been chained up since his most recent attack on Presbury.

The professor canted his head toward the wolfish cry, then nimbly capered across the vine-covered wall toward the stables and the hysterical Roy, soon vanishing out of sight.

I laid a hand on Holmes' arm and he gave a start, looking at me in bewilderment. "Come, Holmes, we must stop this," I hissed. We gained our feet and followed the clambering Professor Presbury with what speed we could muster.

As we rounded the wall we saw Presbury. He was hunched down before Roy, and taunting the chained wolfhound exactly like a mischievous temple monkey in India throwing nuts and stones at visitors. Roy lunged at his chain, baying in rage at the cruel beast that was no longer his beloved master and sounding not like an angry dog but a murderous wolf. If Presbury got too close or the dog's chain broke –

And then we saw Roy slip his collar.

I was already racing across the lawn, and hurled myself at the wolfhound in a full rugger tackle, bowling Roy over before he could seize Presbury. The dog snarled and thrashed, jaws snapping in the air over my head, and heaved me off. I seized the dog's empty collar, still attached to its chain, just as Roy sank his teeth into my right forearm. I yelled in pain – a sound echoed by a cry from behind me – but dragged the thick leather collar back over the great shaggy head and stumbled away, out of the range of the chain. Mr. Bennett was there now, surely drawn from the horrific noise, and soothed the raging dog with his familiar voice and scent.

Presbury lay curled on the ground with his arms over his head and screeching like a frightened monkey, but he was safe; the dog had not touched him. He was alone; Holmes was not with him. Wincing, I reached for my torn sleeve and found two other familiar hands at the work already.

"You fool, Watson, you idiot," Holmes choked, peeling back the ruined cloth. "It's possible the coat stopped the teeth from…" but at the sight of the bleeding teeth-marks in my forearm he froze.

"You said yourself it was unlikely to be hydrophobia." My voice was calm, as it had been while dealing with patients under enemy fire. I did not feel calm – not between the pain of the bite, my shock at what I'd seen and heard, and my fear for myself.

Roy threw back his head and howled exactly like a wolf, the same blood-chilling sound we had heard before. We all stared at Roy; Bennett, especially, stared in horror from Presbury's curled screeching form to the howling dog, and back to his employer. "The dog…" he murmured, "the _dog_."

Holmes' hands were icy on my arm. "Let us take the Professor to bed, Mr. Bennett, and then we three will examine his study thoroughly," he said in the same dead-calm voice I had just used.

"Roy is not hydrophobic, whatever else is wrong with him," Bennett said firmly as we bore Presbury back to the house. "His behaviour has been strange nearly as long as has been the Professor's, but with none of the symptoms of hydrophobia."

"That is pleasant news indeed, Mr. Bennett," Holmes snapped. "Now we need only fear what other contagions can be passed through blood."

While Bennett put Presbury to bed, stilling his hysteria into sleep with an injection of morphia, Holmes washed and dressed my forearm (the antiseptic sting adding to the pain of the bite). Only then did we go into Presbury's study.

On the desk, surrounded by tomes and tokens of modern scientific endeavor and rational thought, lay letters from a Lowenstein in Bohemia, and boxes and phials from an alchemist's illuminated grimoire. Animal glands, _soi-disant_ rejuvenation compounds from a dozen different species, all with the stated intent to turn back the clock and return youth's vitality to a man courting a girl younger than his daughter. This animal's pineal gland to transfer its agility to the imbiber; that reptile's for longevity; extracts of ape and bear and wolf and tortoise and langur monkey – this latter seeming to have made up the bulk of the latest dose of quackery, judging from the latest letter and the professor's behaviour.

I thought of the dog, howling like a wolf in the stables; I recalled Silver Blaze, and how the faithless groom who'd intended to lame him before race day had practised his criminal surgery on sheep before his attempt on the horse.

Holmes spoke my thoughts aloud; his voice was a thread of ice. "He experimented on the dog first, before trying these foul concoctions on himself."

"And turned Roy wolf, just as he himself—" Bennett stared at me and at my bandaged forearm, and he was as rigid as Holmes.

In that moment memories of my gran's stories of werewolves iced my heart – and just as I angrily banished such ridiculous fears up rose the image of a dignified and respected elderly man of science reduced to a gibbering apelike madman. But the other two were looking at me, and they were frightened too. My voice was as level as when I sewed a screaming infantryman's belly closed under fire. "Then I must remain under observation, to see if the dog's aberrant behavior is reproduced in me. In the meantime I am far more likely to face infection or lockjaw from this bite than medically-induced lycanthropy."

"Indeed," said Sherlock Holmes, and his voice was steel. I knew he too was maintaining an artificial calm. "We will return to Baker Street. I shall write to this Lowenstein who has supplied such toxic potions masquerading as medicine, let him know that I hold him criminally responsible, and we will have no more trouble from that end of the business. In the meantime, Mr. Bennett, what of your employer?"

"Say nothing – I only beg you to say nothing of this!" Bennett cried. "The scandal would engulf Edith, his reputation, the very university if any outside force were to learn of this."

"If Watson's injury remains only a painful bite, we will say nothing," my friend said levelly. "But if his life is put in the balance for any reason, natural or unnatural, from this attack, you may be assured that I will speak to the very worst journalists in London, and should the outcry level this place to the ground I won't lose a night's sleep over it." Having seen my friend's fury over my prior bloodletting, and in no gentle mood myself, I nodded agreement with the sentiment at the suddenly-pale academic.

"There is an early train to London, Watson," said Sherlock Holmes as we left the house. "We should just be able to collect our things at the Chequers before we catch it." Weary and worn from the long watch, the shocks the night had given, and the pain and concomitant fear caused by my bite, I longed only to retire and try to sleep the last few hours of the night. But Holmes was right; if the wound turned septic, better to be in London where modern medical help was closer at hand than in a college town. I feared becoming as animalistic as Presbury or as savage as Roy, but greater still was my terror of contracting tetanus or acquiring a gangrenous infection that would require amputation of my right arm.

We left the hostel just as the milk wagon appeared on its early rounds, and walked to the train station. The eastern sky was lightening from indigo to cobalt when we stepped aboard. And only when we were settled in our closed and locked first-class train compartment did I speak.

"Holmes. I feel…warm. Very warm."

One cool hand rested on my forehead, as dispassionately as a nurse; but the whitening of the other hand's knuckles on his walking stick betrayed his feelings. I was overwhelmed with a flood of affection for him, and sorrow for the fear he felt; I wanted very badly to wrap him in my arms, and for the thousandth time reviled the deplorable laws of this country that made our love a crime. I was so overwhelmed with grief that I wanted to cry out loud, and was frightened by how powerful the urge was to hold him tightly and keen till the entire train-car heard me. Surely this was a symptom, some primal regression of my emotional stability.

"I will call Anstruther when we get home." His voice was made of lead.

I thought of Roy. "Holmes. You ought to lock me in my—"

"Out of the question," he snapped, anger rising in his voice. "Watson, you are not a wolfhound and you are not turning into a wolf, nor a langur monkey, and had you only let the Professor reap the just reward of his own conceit and vanity instead of rushing in this would not have happened!"

"I was slow!" I snapped back, fire rising in me – temper or fever, I cared not which.

"Slow? You ran across the grounds—"

"I was slow in Garrideb's shop!" I blurted out. "He never should have been able to shoot at all, but I was slow!"

Stunned silence between us. We glared at each other.

Out with it all, then, as if testifying at an Army hearing. "Evans was clearly dangerous – the history you'd given me told me that, even without learning his nickname. When we surprised him…that way he spoke? I've heard it before, in dangerous places by dangerous men, a way to wave a red cape at a bull to hide the sword, trying to throw off their targets just before the fatal shot. And I _hesitated_. I'd thought, He's just doing a bit of burglary, even with his wicked history he can't mean to endanger his neck by adding murder to the charges, and there are two guns pointed at his head, surely he won't do anything. That's why I got shot. I didn't listen to my instincts, and that moment gave him time to draw on us."

"Do you blame _yourself_ for that bastard's attack?" Holmes cried, angry and heedless of his profanity.

"I swore I would not hesitate a second time!" The fire raced through my blood. It didn't feel like fever or temper, only the righteousness of a fighter. "Here? Tonight? I saw that maddened dog and knew what would happen, and this time I was ready and I acted. I am not too old to aid you in the field!"

And there it was, all of it. I dropped my head, looking at my bandaged arm in its loose sling.

A long cool hand rested on my bare wrist. " _Mon soldat incensé,_ " Sherlock Holmes said softly. "My foolish soldier. How could you think there would ever be a time when I would not need you?"

I continued in the language with which we spoke words of love in places where only dullard English ears would hear and not comprehend. " _C'est vrai, je suis votre soldat_. It's true. I am your soldier. But first, I needed to prove myself to myself."

"No matter what this proof brings to both of us." His voice was low, and heavy; the anger was gone.

"I am afraid, too." But the memory of the Professor screeching in fear only, with not a mark on him, and knowing that I had saved him, rested squarely in the other pan of the scale. "But I had a duty, as a medical man, to keep Presbury from a dangerous or fatal mauling in his compromised condition. I was able to act, and the Professor is safe, and may even recover from his bout of madness now. I'd do it again. That is what soldiers are for." Once again I wanted to embrace him; when we are home, I reminded myself.

We were silent for a time, staring at the empty seat opposite us in the compartment rather than at the trees and houses outside.

Holmes finally broke that silence, in that same low tone. "I find my thoughts remarkably similar to those I entertained last July, in that curio shop: This petty, ridiculous case would prove an unworthy cause of your death."

I exhaled hard through my nose in a short humourless laugh. "Holmes, nine out of ten soldier deaths are senseless farces."

"You may be reconciled to that fact, but I am not," Holmes snapped. "This ends, Watson, for good and all this time. Whether the worst happens due to this wound or you merely have a sore arm for two days, our firm must finally close up shop."

That shock was like being punched in the stomach. "Surely not from this!" I cried, appalled at the idea that my injury had ended Sherlock Holmes' career.

Holmes waved an impatient hand. "That bite is only the final straw on the camel's back, Watson. The work has been disappointing for too long now, as you yourself have seen. The police are a good deal better at collecting evidence, observing and deducing, and the best of them are able to use my methods and track the rank and file criminals that fill London. The only times we have seen Lestrade these past few years are during his regular social visits to Baker Street and his snooker games at your club. More and more my thoughts turn toward other branches of science than criminology. You yourself are engrossed not only with your practise but with the medical monographs you are writing; you also own a considerable stockpile of case-notes from far worthier efforts, the writing up of which would occupy you for years if we stopped offering our services as consulting detectives today. And today it is time to stop – past time to stop."

When laid out like that, I could not dispute the truth of what he said. More importantly, my injury was neither the sole nor even the main reason for his disenchantment with the work. I nodded, in accord with him, and only felt a deep sadness at this ending. Again I felt like throwing back my head and emitting a cry of sorrow, weeping like a woman, and fought the urge; this alien warmth flooding my body was like a draught of pure emotion, and I feared what it would bring should it be loosed. I looked out through the window of the closed train compartment door, trying to still myself; but gratitude flooded me at the cool hand that stayed atop my own. Now I wanted nothing more than to kiss him, and fought that need too, frantic reason warring with my entire body.

"How is it?" His voice was gentle, and only made me want to kiss him more.

I replied truthfully. "The warmth I feel is…odd. I don't feel feverish or delirious at all, not as I have when I've had fever before. But everything feels very close to the surface. I'm having a difficult time not reacting emotionally – all emotions, not just fear and anger. I feel grief and sadness and love and happiness and I want to proclaim them all, now. I fear compromising us both." I heard the tears in my voice. "I don't know if it's fear of what this dog-bite is doing to me, or cowardice after the fact, or shock – or if I am starting to feel the effects of the serum used on Roy." I gripped my hands together. "Holmes. I am finding it very difficult not to express myself in an illegal manner around you. We must get home soon."

"We will, Watson." The coolness left as Holmes resumed his pose with his hands in his lap. It was right and sensible of him to let me go, far safer for both our sakes; yet this loss of his hand's touch made tears start in my eyes as if I had lost a loved one. "You are ill, and have nothing for which to feel shame. When we are home, you will be safe to express everything."

Home. Our home we'd made together, our secret from everyone who did not matter. I hung my head down with my eyes closed, fighting for control.

Holmes told me when the station approaching was Marylebone at last. I stood, feeling heat radiate from me as if I'd been out in the subcontinental sun all day, and groped for my valise only to find empty air; I opened my eyes to see Holmes holding both our bags. The look of worry and dread in his eyes was as poorly-disguised as my own emotional state.

_Wait until you're home. Let him lock you in your room like a mad dog, and others will be safe from you._

The cab ride home was equally tortuous – we could barely keep from touching in those close quarters, and Holmes felt my heat every time our knees knocked together with the swaying of the hansom. I wanted to grip Holmes and cry out to the driver to be more careful with this precious man, my reason for living, my best beloved. _You will put the both of you in prison._

The cab stopped on our street, and the dear familiar old flat numbers. I stumbled out of the cab and left Holmes to pay the driver, gasping at the heat blazing in my flesh. I fumbled for the house key, had the door open, flew upstairs past a startled Bridgid sweeping the hallway. I had to lock myself away, keep Mrs. Hudson and the others safe from me – keep Holmes from paying the price for my actions at the stable-yard. All of them – Billy and Bridgid and all within these walls – were my family and I must protect them, from myself if needs must.

My flight upstairs was halted by the most glorious smell that drew me, enticed. I stood, enchanted in the centre of it – not in my study and spare room, but in the main bedroom. I breathed in hard, mouth open to take in more of the rich aroma, and pulled away everything that kept me from experiencing the entire sensation and freeing me of the heat enveloping me, until my entire skin was exposed to this gorgeous scent.

I heard the steady tread outside, the stairs creaking slightly more under the doubled weight of him carrying all our luggage, his beautiful voice level and commanding as he spoke to a distressed Mrs. Hudson. He was coming, my lovely man, my spouse in all but law, my mate.

My blood sang in my veins, so sweet and high that I wanted to match its tone of pure joy with my voice. All my loved ones were together again and my mate was coming to me. What was taking him so long?

Finally he was outside the door, his voice, his lovely voice speaking reassuringly to me, telling me to be unafraid. I wasn't afraid. Well, yes I'd been bitten and I was afraid, I had been afraid. But I was better, so much better now that we were home and safe from unfriendly eyes and he was so close.

And when Sherlock Holmes appeared in the room, amplifying his delicious scent a hundredfold with his presence, I leaped into his arms and let my voice match the song in my blood.

***

I awoke, slow and languorous after a long sated sleep, and stretched to the full extent my fingers and toes would allow. Every muscle ached deliciously, with sharper aches here and there. The blazing heat I'd felt inside was nearly gone, tamped down to a steady warm glow. The room was pitch-black; the sounds outside told me it was deep into the night. We'd returned in late morning. How long had I slept?

I yawned, and as I closed my mouth I tasted blood on my teeth.

I bolted upright as it all came back – the wolfhound, the bite, the heat, my reactions, _Holmes_ –

I registered the body in the bed, so still beside me. The house was so quiet. My heart was pounding so hard I couldn't hear anything else. I couldn't hear him.

I fumbled for the side-table, groping for matches and the candle. My hands were shaking. What had I done in my maddened state?

Light flared and I shut them against the brightness for a moment. Then I forced them open.

We were in Holmes' bed, and a single sheet covered us – a sheet not only rumpled and stained but torn. The smell in the room was unmistakable to a man of the world. I almost collapsed in relief; I saw no blood.

Holmes lay beside me and I did not breathe again until I saw the movement of his ribs that indicated that he was asleep or insensate. His sides, shoulders, and the back of his neck were mottled with dark bruises, clearly in the shape of a bite from a man's mouth.

I remembered everything that had happened from the moment he'd walked into his room that morning. I remembered everything I – we – did. I remembered…howling.

Holmes stirred and groaned. "Mm drr mnn," came the dear familiar voice half-muffled by the pillow, "It is easily two in the morning. But it is good that you are yourself again." He rolled over with another groan, to face me.

Any words of self-reproach or pleas for forgiveness that had been on my tongue fled at the look he gave me. That was not the look of a man who had been brutally attacked – or, rather, it was the look of a man who had been brutally attacked to the immense satisfaction of all parties. I found myself mirroring his wicked smile.

My smile fled as heat flooded me again, this time in chagrin. "Mrs. Hudson?" I whispered.

Holmes laughed. "It's all right, John. When I came in, I told Mrs. Hudson to send the rest of the staff home and to leave the premises herself immediately, and stay at a nearby hotel at least overnight – that I wished to quarantine you for observation, and as I had already been exposed I would remain with you and send word if any further medical aid was necessary." He sat up, wincing, and drew in his breath. "I shall be sleeping on my stomach for at least a week – I am not a young man any more. Of course the poor woman was almost beside herself with worry for you, and I felt the same way. Naturally I provided her with the necessary funds to follow my orders and saw her safely out before I walked into my room, only to be met by your resounding greeting."  
  
I stared at my bandaged arm, which ached from the wolfhound's bite but showed no sign of infection or suppuration. I looked at the wreck we – that I – had made of the bedding, felt the utter enervation in my flesh from hours of profligacy I had not been able to attain in my hale twenties. The lovely smell drew me once again, and without thinking about it I curled atop my lover with my head on his chest, tracing my bite-marks with careful fingers. He in turn caressed me and ran fingers through my hair. I nuzzled at one bruise and licked it.

"I am as bewildered as you are," Holmes murmured. "Relieved, exhausted, and quite sated; but bewildered."

What had I been infected with? No natural illness from a dog's bite had such symptoms. If wolf gland extract now ran in my veins from Roy's bite, why did I not act like Roy, like a vicious wolf?

"Watson?"

Only then did I realise that I was still licking Holmes' bite-marks, and his face and throat as well. I held still, my apprehension no match for the contentment that thrummed in my flesh and the love for Holmes that filled me like a wineskin. "By Jove," I murmured.

"Perhaps," said Sherlock Holmes thoughtfully, one long finger stroking my moustache, "there is more to lupine nature than we currently understand. This may require further study. In the meantime, dear boy…" and he cast a rueful look over the ruin I'd made of the bedclothes in the throes of an animal passion that was everything Professor Presbury had vainly hoped to attain, "we will need to reimburse our landlady for the sheets and blankets, for these are good only for the incinerator."

As if on cue, the bed promptly listed to one side with a solid thump that nearly tumbled us out.

"And the bed," I added, and then we began laughing.

***

My arm got better in a matter of days, with no infection and no signs of lockjaw nor hydrophobia; the bandages came off before either Holmes or I were fully recovered from our wild conjugation (both of us walking gingerly, and Holmes obliged to dine standing up, for a day or two). The heat that had engulfed me in the train had left save for a residual warmth throughout my body that slowly returned to my regular temperature over the course of the next few days.

When I was able, I returned to my practise and my monograph notes; Holmes seemed content dividing his time between his chemical experiments and the library.

I wrote Mr. Bennett to let him know I was well and not suffering any ill effects from Roy's bite (I omitted illegal details) and received his reply by post that Presbury was recovering from his bouts of self-medicated madness. Even Roy, he said, no longer attacked the Professor or anyone else, and was being kept by Alice Morphy while she waited for Presbury to recover.

"So Roy is no longer affected by the wolf in his blood," Holmes replied when I read the letter to him. "That bodes well for your own outlook, Watson, as well as mine – had your enthusiasm remained as it was on our return from Camford I would rapidly undergo premature aging."

"My chequebook is relieved as well, you know," I retorted to cover my embarrassment. "We can't afford to replace the bed on a regular basis." Mrs. Hudson had known our explanation for the broken bed-limb was an arrant lie, but our generous reimbursement went far in returning her good humour. The new bed was a splendid oak four-poster and large enough to comfortably sleep two.

"That would rather cut into our retirement funds," Holmes replied drolly.

I felt a twinge at Holmes bringing up the subject once more; but I had been acclimating myself all week to the thought of us leaving the work behind to pursue other interests. "Unless you get a job at the zoological gardens tending to the wolves. I think you've read every book the British Library has on the subject of the animals."

"The really interesting information is in the newest volumes." Holmes smiled and put a finger to his lips in thought. "It was from such that I learned that a wolf's inner temperature is warmer than ours, very likely the reason you felt hot. Many scientists are beginning to think that wolves are more affectionate and loving among their mates than we previously believed. The creatures also mate for life – and undergo prolonged 'courtship rituals' in doing so." The face he made as he recited the euphemism made me flush at the implication.

"Perhaps that is why I reacted not with savagery but passion," I replied. "Roy faced an assailant and reacted as a wolf would do." I thought of the day we returned home, and a smile curled the edges of my moustache. "But I was with my mate, and according to your studies I did indeed react as a wolf would do."

"Watson, if you persist in smiling at me in that fashion I shall be quite undone," my spouse groaned. "I have only just resumed my accustomed seat at supper."

"When do you plan to lose your accustomed seat, Holmes?" I faced him, and a question that still lay between us. "Did you not speak of retiring to a farm?"

Holmes waved one dismissive hand. "Not for a good long while, my dear man. I find I cannot yet lose all the comforts of city life, and I will not pull you from your practise without a good deal of advanced warning. We may pursue much of our work here as well as in the country. When I am ready to start beekeeping in earnest, I will say so, and only then will we go to Sussex. In the meantime I plan to accustom myself to a life untrammeled by dull cases and irritating clients." He stretched out his arms, winced, and rubbed one shoulder, giving me a reproachful look.

I smiled at him, in the same fashion he'd remarked upon. "I have just the treatment for that bruise, old man. What you need is a little hair of the dog that bit you."

Sherlock Holmes made a face at my wordplay; but the alacrity with which he abandoned his chemistry table for the bedroom, me close on his heels, conveyed his true feelings on the subject.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2017 ACD Holmesfest Gift Exchange, for spacemutineer.


End file.
